(no subject)
Everything's cauterized, more or less, but I got honest-to-God misty reading a piece in last weekend's Times Magazine. An article on Bumfights. I'd known about the videos for some time, in an abstract way--they'd elicited a witless "how awful!" and nothing more. But.
"The homeless coalition says it fears that the films have contributed to teenage violence against the homeless, especially because viewers are encouraged to submit 'ruckus' footage of their own. According to law-enforcement officials, a number of young people have videotaped themselves attacking homeless people, including four teenagers in Melbourne, Australia, who killed a man by setting fire to his tent; five in Alberta, Canada, who assaulted a homeless man with bottles and a club, then urinated on his face; and four young men near Cleveland, who crept up on homeless people and shocked them with a stun gun."
It's been a firm policy of mine to regard everything as at least potentially funny. Usually it's poor execution or slack wit that disqualifies a would-be gutbuster (where's my freaking thesaurus?). But but but. Some cows may yet be sacred. Stinkwavy, homeless cows. See? Levity's earthbound. I don't think I feel well.
(An attack of empathy? Unaccountable. I still feel mean and ugly and horrible. Grinch-hearted. Today I had my first-ever fond recollection of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which I never finished in high school. Well, nothing but time now.)
"The homeless coalition says it fears that the films have contributed to teenage violence against the homeless, especially because viewers are encouraged to submit 'ruckus' footage of their own. According to law-enforcement officials, a number of young people have videotaped themselves attacking homeless people, including four teenagers in Melbourne, Australia, who killed a man by setting fire to his tent; five in Alberta, Canada, who assaulted a homeless man with bottles and a club, then urinated on his face; and four young men near Cleveland, who crept up on homeless people and shocked them with a stun gun."
It's been a firm policy of mine to regard everything as at least potentially funny. Usually it's poor execution or slack wit that disqualifies a would-be gutbuster (where's my freaking thesaurus?). But but but. Some cows may yet be sacred. Stinkwavy, homeless cows. See? Levity's earthbound. I don't think I feel well.
(An attack of empathy? Unaccountable. I still feel mean and ugly and horrible. Grinch-hearted. Today I had my first-ever fond recollection of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which I never finished in high school. Well, nothing but time now.)